Twenty-third Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse
Valenica, Spain, July 16-18, 2013
The contribution of different forms of pronouns
to reading comprehension in French-speaking children
Hakima Megherbi1, Alix Seigneuric1, Maryse Bianco2, Pascale Colé3, & Steve Bueno1
1-Université Paris 13 - Sorbonne Paris Cité, EA 4403 UTRPP, Villetaneuse, France
2-Université Pierre-Mendès-France, EA602 LSE, Grenoble, France
3-Aix-Marseille Université, UMR 7290 LPC, France
Acknowledgements
This study is supported by a grant from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche in France
(Programme DEVCOMP 2010-2013).
Introduction
Anaphors
Different forms of anaphors serve as cohesion markers between sentences
to ensure the referential continuity of text:
- Definite noun phrases and proper names
- Zero anaphora
- Definite pronouns
- Demonstrative pronouns
- Personal pronouns, etc.
Mary saw the postman coming from a distance.
He brought a letter coming from uncle Charles
Mary was waiting for him.
Different forms of anaphors vary in terms of their lexical specificity and
the degree to which their interpretation is governed by the surrounding
text.
How to hook the correct referent ?
Introduction
Anaphoric pronoun
Pronouns are morphologically marked for person, gender, number,
case, and animacy, depending on languages.
Mary saw the postman coming from a distance.
She was waiting for him.
Given that they don’t share semantic information with the referent, pronouns
are characterized by a low lexical specificity.
Their interpretation is highly dependent on morphological cues but also on the
structure of the text and the interpretation of context (Charolles, 2002;
Hickmann, 2003).
Introduction
French personal pronouns
Personal pronouns in French are marked for gender, number and case.
Unlike to English, in French, pronouns are not marked for animacy.
One of the characteristics of personal pronouns in French is that most of forms
occur in pre-verbal position and this for subject pronouns but also for object
pronouns.
- Subject pronoun occurs in the canonical subject–verb order (SVO)
- Direct pronouns and most of indirect pronouns shift from postverbal to a
preverbal position yielding a SOV order. The canonical order is not preserved.
The specificity of pronominal system is that chain of pronouns of two or even 3 in
a pre-verbal position, subject, direct object and indirect object
Introduction
French personal pronouns
John raconte une histoire à Julie. Il la lui raconte avec émotion.
(John is telling a story to Julie. He is telling it to her with emotion).
He {it} {her} is telling with emotion
Julie dit un secret à John. Elle le lui dit avec émotion.
(Julie is telling a secret to John. She is telling it to him with emotion).
She {it} {him} is telling with emotion
Introduction
Processing of pronouns in children
Studies on production showed that despite some early use of some referring
expressions, - the discourse-internal cohesion function of linguistic devices
constitutes a late development around 10-11 years. The functional approach
highlighted the importance of taking into account different kinds of factors:
syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and more general cognitive processes that are
progressively integrated during development.
- The gender cue is taken into account very early (around 4 years) to identify
the referent (Hickmann, 2003; Jakubowicz & Rigaut, 1997). Similar results in
English (Arnold et al. 2003).
- Object pronouns are more difficult to process than subject pronouns until 10
years (Zesiger et al. 2010; Lima & Bianco, 2002). Especially the indirect object.
Introduction
Processing of pronouns in reading comprehension
Poor Comprehenders: Previous studies showed that PC have difficulties
to interpret pronouns when cognitive, semantic and pragmatic processes
are required (e.g. Ehrlich & Rémond, 1997; Oakhill & Yuill, 1986; Megherbi
& Ehrlich, 2004; 2005; Seigneuric & Megherbi, 2008).
 Pronoun processing can be considered as an important sub-skill of reading
comprehension.
Previous studies have identified different components of reading comprehension
including, among others, integration and inference skills (Oakhill et al. 2003;
Oakhill & Cain, 2012)
Introduction
The question of the present study
Is pronoun processing a significant predictor of children reading comprehension
when compared to well-known predictors such as word reading and vocabulary
knowledge ?
This question was tested in three age groups from 8 to 11 years.
Three forms of personal pronouns were separatly investigated:
-
Subject pronoun (IL/ELLE- He/She)
Direct object pronoun (LE/LA-him, her, it)
Indirect object pronoun (LUI-him, her, to him, to her)
Multiple regression analyses have been conducted to test the relative contribution
of each variable in each group.
Method
- Participants:
228 French-speaking children aged from 8-to-11 years:
3rd graders (n=75), 4th graders (n= 71) and 5th graders (n=82)
-
Material:
Dependent variable
Experimental Tasks
Other variables
Written text comprehension
Pronouns processing
Word reading
Vocabulary
Digit span
Progressives Matrices Raven
6 texts:
narrative and expostive T.
Max.: 76
3 forms of pronouns
Word reading: one minute test.
Receptive vocabulary: EVIP (Peabody)
Digit span (WISC)
PM47 (Raven)
IL/ELLE (max : 14)
LE/LA (max 31)
LUI (max: 20)
Characteristics of three forms of pronouns in French system
SUB-Pr
IL/ELLE
(He/She/it)
d-Obj-Pr
LE/LA
(him, her, it)
i-Obj-Pr
LUI
(him/her)(to
him/to her)
Grammatical Canonical Gender Grammatical
function
order (SVO)
cue
category
Subject
yes
yes
Pronoun
Direct object
no
yes
Pronoun or
determiner
Indirect
object
no
no
Pronoun
In the case of ambiguity, the processing of pronouns relies not only on morphological
cues and syntactic analysis, but also on other sources of information: context and
pragmatic information.
Method
- Material of experimental tasks
Three series of text were built to assess the pronoun processing of the three
forms.
Texts contain two or three sentences. The first sentence supplied the context and
mentioned two or three protagonists. The last sentence contained the target
pronoun.
At the end of each short text, children responded to a question targeting the
assignment of the pronoun.
Example of text for Indirect pronoun LUI
Oncle Jacques a offert un ordinateur à Mathilde…. (…..). Il lui a offert cet ordinateur pour
son anniversaire.
lui: ………Mathilde………………………………………………
Uncle Jack has offered a computer to Mathilda ... (……). He has offered her this computer
for her birthday.
her: …………………………………………………………………….
Results
- Descriptive results
% of correct responses
3 rd graders
4th graders
5th graders
Reading
comprehension
68
68
78
Sub-Pr
87
83
88
d-obj-Pr
76
71
81
i-obj-Pr
51
57
65
3rd Grade (N= 75)
Correlation matrix between all variables
R.Comp
Sub-Pr d-Obj-Pr
i-Obj-Pr
Voc
Word R
NV
Intell
Sub-Pr
.62*
1
d-Obj-Pr
.76*
.59 *
1
i-Obj-Pr
.47*
.40 *
.61 *
1
Voc
.49*
.51 *
.37 *
.31 *
1
Word R
.53*
.34 *
.36 *
.21
.28 *
1
NV Intell
.47*
.45 *
.42 *
.39 *
.35 *
.18
1
Digit Sp
.18
.26 *
.21
.12
.19
.14
.28 *
3rd Grade (N= 75)
Standard Multiple Regression with Reading comprehension as dependent variable
R² = .71
Adjusted R² = .68
β
sr² (unique)
p
Sub-Pr
.12
.01
ns
d-Obj-Pr
.53 *
.13 *
<.01
i-Obj-Pr
-.04
.00
ns
Voc
.14
.01
ns (.08)
Word R
.26 *
.06 *
<.01
NV Intell
.13
.01
ns
Digit Span
-.05
.00
ns
4th Grade (N= 71)
Correlation matrix between all variables
R.Comp
Sub-Pr d-Obj-Pr
i-Obj-Pr
Voc
Word R
NV
Intell
Sub-Pr
.73*
1
d-Obj-Pr
.72*
.57 *
1
i-Obj-Pr
.60*
.57*
.64 *
1
Voc
.73*
.49 *
.49 *
.38 *
1
Word R
.52*
.34 *
.49 *
.33*
.33 *
1
NV Intell
.57*
.41 *
.40 *
.45*
.49 *
.12
1
Digit Sp
.24*
.07
.29*
.19
.15
.26*
.11
4th Grade (N= 71)
Standard Multiple Regression with Reading comprehension as dependent variable
R² = .82
Adjusted R² = .80
β
sr² (unique)
p
Sub-Pr
.29*
.05*
<.01
d-Obj-Pr
.20*
.02*
.02
i-Obj-Pr
.05
.00
ns
Voc
.33*
.07*
<.01
Word R
.16*
.02*
.01
NV Intell
.16*
.02*
.02
Digit Span
.04
.00
ns
5th Grade (N= 82 )
Correlation matrix between all variables
R.Comp
Sub-Pr d-Obj-Pr
i-Obj-Pr
Voc
Word R
NV
Intell
Sub-Pr
.79*
1
d-Obj-Pr
.78*
.68*
1
i-Obj-Pr
.75*
.64*
.70 *
1
Voc
.65*
.62 *
.62 *
.54 *
1
Word R
.57*
.49 *
.59 *
.49*
.42*
1
NV Intell
.46*
.37 *
.46 *
.44*
.30 *
.24*
1
Digit Sp
.15
.06
.07
.14
.13
.45*
.04
5th Grade (N= 82)
Standard Multiple Regression with Reading comprehension as dependent variable
R² = .78
Adjusted R² = .76
β
sr² (unique)
p
Sub-Pr
.34 *
.05 *
<.01
d-Obj-Pr
.24 *
.02 *
.02
i-Obj-Pr
.24 *
.03 *
<.01
Voc
.10
.01
ns
Word R
.07
.00
ns
NV Intell
.07
.00
ns
Digit Span
.03
.00
ns
Conclusion
Pronoun processing made a unique contribution to reading comprehension at each
grade.
Changes occurred during the development:
In grade 3, the direct-object pronoun le/la is the only pronoun variable that
explained reading comprehension variance;
In grade 4, two forms of pronouns direct-object pronoun le/la and subject-pronoun
il/elle emerged as significant predictors;
In grade 5, each of the three forms added a unique part of variance over and
above the other variables.
SVO
SUB-Pr
IL/ELLE
(He/She/it)
d-Obj-Pr
LE/LA
(him, her, it)
i-Obj-Pr
LUI
(him/her)(to
him/to her)
category
yes
Gender
cue
yes
no
yes
no
no
Pronoun
or
determin
Pronoun
3rd
Pronoun
x
4th 5th
x
x
x
x
x
Conclusion
SVO
SUB-Pr
IL/ELLE
(He/She/it)
d-Obj-Pr
LE/LA
(him, her, it)
i-Obj-Pr
LUI
(him/her)(to
him/to her)
category
yes
Gender
cue
yes
no
yes
no
no
Pronoun
or
determin
Pronoun
3rd
Pronoun
x
4th 5th
x
x
x
x
x
In French, the lexical form le/la is highly frequently and early used as a definite determiner
(Le chat/The cat). Thus, the functions of this lexical form vary and this characteristic could
explain the early contribution of this form observed in grade 3. As children grow, the
pragmatic factors become more and more important to process. Indeed, the pronoun “lui”
is ambiguous with regard to gender. That means that children had to process pragmatic
information to identify the appropriate referent. This corroborates previous results observed especially in production- showing that pragmatic information plays a more and
more important role with age (e.g. Hickmann, 2003).
Thank you for your attention !